Q5. How does Hotelogix ensure anytime, anywhere access?
Hotelogix helps you gain access to the guest management system from anywhere – your living room, office, or even on the road. All you need is an Internet connection and your login and password details.
Q6. How does Hotelogix handle multiple properties?
Hotelogix allows access to multiple properties from the same login id and password. This ensures fast access and it’s also easy to switch between multiple properties.
Q7. How does Hotelogix ensure safety and security of all my data?
Hotelogix uses the industry standard SSL encryption to transmit data. This ensures that your data is secure. This is the same technology used by banks and online trading companies. In addition, your data is saved on firewall-protected servers and backed up automatically.
Q8. What happens if one or more of my sites running Hotelogix face a virus problem or their systems crash?
Nothing! Since Hotelogix is a hosted solution, your data is well protected. You can still access your data and stay online through any computer that has Internet connectivity.
Q9. Do I have to pay extra for live support?
No! Support is included in the monthly subscription plan. For further details, visit the Pricing Plans section.
Q10. What if a guest / customer standing at reception needs to check out NOW, but the internet goes down?
An always-up service of an Enterprise solution like a Hotelogix PMS is critical. But the simplicity of the System and its ground-up architecture lets you address this in more ways than one.
For starters, you do not need any special high-speed connectivity for using Hotelogix. A simple dial-up works just as well. So having an Internet connection to work with, and then a few for backup is not a problem, and this ensures that you stay tuned in, always.
But if for some unwarranted reason, you still disconnect, and an emergency is at hand to check out a Guest, or even worst, it’s a large Group, Hotelogix comes to your rescue through its unique Downtime Email Security. At Night Audit, Hotelogix sends you complete Reservation details of your Property along with full Account Statements of every Check-in and Check-out scheduled for the day. Just open your Outlook to print these details, and with some bit of manual billing, you avert any panic stricken grief with ease.”
Q11. Is there any option for printing all arrivals registration cards or all departure folios? Also can we route/split charges.
Yes, there is option for printing all arrivals registration cards and departure folios during Night Audit. Yes, Hotelogix lets you split the folios multiple ways, route transactions on folios dynamically for both, the Single and Group Reservations. You will find this in the Payment section of the Reservation.
Q12. Is your GDS connection available yet? I would at least like to hook up to Expedia’s portals.
The GDS /IDS connectivity is not in place. It is a soon to be released feature and is due in the coming quarter. We will be connected to all popular GDS and over 1200 Reservation site along with close to 600000 Travel Agents worldwide.
“Hotelogix Architecture is designed to seamlessly integrate Reservations, Frontdesk, Housekeeping, Spa, POS's, and even your website, Room Inventory Distributions through the GDS/IDS, your Marketing Offices (multi-location) & the Travel Agents you work with, on a unified platform.”
Q13. I see you have a module for website booking which I would also need. How long does it take to confirm reservation?
The integrated Web Reservation Engine is an intrinsic part of the Hotelogix offering. Web Reservation engine lets you take confirmed bookings from your website while maintaining up-to-the minute availability & room status for your website visitors. The reservations from your website are confirmed and show up instantly on the Frontdesk Reservation table.
The Guest receives a confirmation email and the same is copied to the Hotel. The reservation itself, shows up instantly on the PMS.
Moreover, the web reservation lets you offer rooms only rates along with multiple rates and packages (selectively or all) and further also allows your web bookers to choose any specific services that you may provide and customize their stay.
Q14. What are the online Payment Gateway’s that are available with Hotelogix?
Hotelogix supports all popular payment gateways.
Integrating with a payment gateway requires you to apply for one through your bank. We can make recommendations for the popular ones that are available (like Authorize.net, Worldpay, Paypal, Verisign, Protex etc.), but more importantly your own bank that needs to support it. Once you select your credit card processor through your bank, we can set it up with a one-time fee @ US $250-500.
Night Audit will close the current days accounting, transactions & operations, and let you start the new days accounting and operations. It is an important feature to streamline the work flow and for smooth operations of a Hotel Property.
Following happens during Night Audit
All reservation discrepancies get checked and get listed for user action. Example, current days pending check-outs get listed for extension of stay, or for checking out.
Folios get automatically generated (can be done manually as well) for Check-outs and No-Shows.
All charges for the next day get posted and the allowances for the package inclusions are posted.
All charges transferred to the room from different POS’s are posted on the Guest Statement of Accounts, or get consumed against the Allowances.
Any extra charge posted on the Guest Account Statement due to human error gets rectified. Example, if Breakfast is charged, even though the room charge is breakfast inclusive, Night Audit corrects this by making a counter entry for the same.
All discounts get applied, and this results in the package loss or package profit calculations.
Housekeeping status gets changed to Dirty, Touch-up or Inspect, as per the room status being Occupied, Available or Checked out. This happens whichever way you have set it in the Admin console.
The Cash Counters can be closed, and money can be withdrawn from them.
Date rollover happens. In other words, the active date of working changes over to the next day while the current days account get locked.
The Night Audit process ends with the reports for the day (called Night Audit Reports), that summarize the transactions and the resulting collections for the day.
Your data is yours. You back it up. You store it. Anytime, anywhere. But your data is safer with us, and less likely to be abused or misused ever.
We employ rigid, commercial industry standard server and network architecture which provides “5 nines” (99.999%) data-center security, uptime, redundancy and firewalls. We are further heading towards security compliances like adhering to PCI standards for the credit card info that you may want stored in the system, and also Thawte security certification. Your data is thoroughly safeguarded from any external threats and moreover safe from getting lost with regular backups and mirrors in a protected server environment of our Host Partners Navisite in USA (Named amongst top 5 ISP’s in the Gartner Report released recently).
Q17. What are the charges for subscribing to Hotelogix.
Hotelogix is available based on a contemporary model of software’s offered as a service (SaaS). You need to pay only as and when you use the system.
Given below are Limited Time Subscription options that are currently available on our website to subscribe to Hotelogix. These offers extend exceptional value to the subscriber while they are available, which is only for a limited period of time.
Plan 1 – Flat US$200 per property per month. A predictable pricing that offers all you may need.
Plan 2* – Simply 20 cents 'per occupied room night'. Pay only when you get paid.
One Time Purchase Plan – One time charge of US$ 4000 per property, and you never pay for using the system again. Additional US$ 2000 for every additional property.
*You pay nothing. Pass on this system usage charge directly on to the closing checkout guest folio. So, in case your system usage is 10 booked room nights for a given month, your monthly subscription charge will be US $2 only. Regional taxes and surcharge may apply.
A caution money deposit of US $200 applies currently for all the plans.
The setup cost of US $350 is currently free. This offer is valid until further notice.
There is nothing to purchase upfront, and you are not bound by any long term contracts or commitments. And, with Hotelogix’s unique design roadmap, you get a system with strong potential of encompassing management of virtually all the critical facets of hospitality sector.
Q18. How do you provide training and support on using Hotelogix?
Hotelogix is an amazingly intuitive system to work with. A close associate says “If you know what you want to do, then you don’t need to think how to do it in Hotelogix.”
Hotelogix is really simple to self learn. We have several how to videos, each of around a minute length to get one started on the Frontdesk. You can view the currently available videos here http://www.hotelogix.com/take-a-tour.php
Further on, there is a ready (and soon round the clock) online support that will be available to assist the Hotel staff in the midst of any task. Clicking on the ‘Live Help’ (always available on the left from End of July 09) will bring up trained associate already on the same page knowing where you are, and saving you the time and trouble to explain. He/she will be able to assist you in real-time, and take you through the task just short of actually doing it for you.
“Meanwhile more videos are getting added for the ‘Administrator Console’ to help manage configurations and for other operational controls.”
Q19. I have comma delimited Excel file with my current guest profile addresses. Please let me know if uploading this is an option.
With Hotelogix, you will never need to enter information of a Guest twice.
Yes, we can help you import your current guest profile data. It may not be possible to upload it directly but if you send us a small sample, we could surely work that out.
Q20. We have been using test data to try the program. Would we be able to start with a clean slate when we switch over or should we start with a new company?
We will be able to clean up the test data and help you start afresh.
Alternatively, if you choose to create a fresh company, we can let you that as well. Only one of them would remain active.
Q21. Is this demo not set up with reports? What will be available in the Trail Account?
Reports
A number of interactive reports are available under the Reports Tab of Hotelogix. This includes the reports on Sales, Daily Receivables/Revenues, Source of Business, Night Audit, Cashiering etc; We have not done a very good job of Grouping them yet, but this will soon be in place.
A number of interactive reports are available under the Reports Tab of Hotelogix. This includes the reports on Sales, Daily Receivables/Revenues, Source of Business, Night Audit, Cashiering etc; We have not done a very good job of Grouping them yet, but this will soon be in place.
Subsequently, a report generator wizard that is scheduled to go live in the last quarter of 2009 will let the Hotel Properties to custom generate their reports easily.
Also, Hotelogix supports Multi-property operations, but consolidated multi-property reports are yet to go Live.
Q22. Will you have the ability to track repeat guests and load them into a new reservation?
Yes, in Hotelogix, you never need to enter information twice. Be it a Guest or even your partners, Travel Agents, Corporate Customers.
Just type the first three letters of the Guest first name, or last name, or their phone number, or city, or Guest ID, and the system immediately gets to work and pulls out the matches to select from your past records. It similarly works for your Travel Agents and Corporate customer profiles that you work with.
Q23. Do you offer personalized training/ on-site training?
While Hotelogix is simple to use system, and moreover self-learn, we do offer the jumpstart that one may look forward to through personalized training and assistance.
We can offer custom training programs that can fit your requirement @US $35 per hour and can be organized at your Hotel premises.
Further, full time onsite staff assistance can be made available @US $20 per hour.
Travel (currently available only from India) is charged additionally for the trainer, and lodging/boarding is borne by you.
The language of communication currently is English only.
Hotelogix offers table-map for your Restaurant/Bar POS, with the table layouts that can be updated from time to time. This is an extensive version which will graphically map tables along with their size, shape, capacity and the restaurant floor-area.
Q26. And what if I wanted to run Hotelogix on my server?
Running Software on your Server
We can offer the software on your server, but it adds significant overhead cost of setup, support, updates and maintenance. The on-site setup starts @ US $10,000. For details, please contact us with your property details, and we will be pleased to assist you. Write to us on sales@hotelogix.com or call us
We can either train your personnel, or offer trained personnel for onsite support.
Also, of your interest could be the enterprise version of Hotelogix. This will allow custom versions of system that will cater to all the specific needs of your properties. Which means, other than the inherent features of Hotelogix, any amount of customization is possible. So, one can really go for a wish-list that we can work-out for your Properties.
There is a difference in the pricing for custom deployments vis-à-vis the current subscription model, both for the initial setup, and the ongoing maintenance, support and updates. Many properties have their unique requirements and ways of working that they would not like to disturb or compromise with. This option is available and should suit them fine.
Q27. How do you take care of System Maintenance downtime? Would about the problem when system goes down in the midst of work?
Even though on trial, the scheduled maintenance can get disruptive. We are listening to your comments, and consistently working to meet your expectations. These updates bring the new features for you to use, and we plan on doing them with virtually no disturbance to your work.
The System Maintenance downtime has been organized to happen with minimal impact to your working. We are pleased to share the policies being put in place for the same:
As a primary measure, the downtime for maintenance is being worked upon to get down to just over a minute. We are to achieve this by managing 2 parallel servers and pulling out just one of them at a time.
The maintenance activity will be less frequent from its current drill of 'once a week anytime' to 'once in 15 days on a fixed date & time' and then further reduced to once a month.
All who are logged-in on the system will receive a prompt to save their work a few minutes before the system is pulled down for maintenance.
All users will receive emails in advance to inform them of the maintenance activity.
All users will get a message prompt to remind them of the scheduled maintenance activity to happen if they login anytime within the 12 hours of the set schedule.
There will be an on-screen red flag with a countdown time to maintenance from a few minutes before going down.
While all of these measures will not be implemented together, we will keep you posted with the available options. You will further be able to customize and make your choices to suit your needs best (Example: You may opt out of emails for periodic maintenance, or get a prompt only when you login at a time when maintenance activity is to take place within the next 4 hours and not 12 hours).
All in all, this activity will be less frequent, more predictable, and definitely not exceed a couple of minutes in the coming months.
